Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world.  It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments  in the field.

Committed to advancing legal scholarship on freedom of expression, CGFoE is back to teaching. Last week, in collaboration with the University of Buenos Aires, CGFoE’s Team members led a class on Freedom of Expression in the European and African Regional Systems.

The instructors – Anderson Javiel Dirocie De León, Senior Legal and Policy Consultant; Lautaro Furfaro, Senior Legal Researcher; and Juan Manuel Ospina, Senior Legal Editor – focused on the European Court of Human Rights and the African Commission and Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, with comparative references to the UN Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Twenty students, enrolled in Professor Brian Frenkel’s postgraduate course within the Master’s Program in International Human Rights Law, engaged in an active discussion.

“The class helped us see many examples of how freedom of expression is dealt with in different jurisdictions, including both the light and dark points on the jurisprudence,” said Professor Frenkel, thanking the team for explaining CGFoE’s Global Case Law Database, which “will allow [his] students to acquire new research tools.”

In addition to our Special Collection Papers on the African and European systems, Anderson, Lautaro, and Juan Manuel presented CGFoE’s forthcoming book chapter, Global Standards on Chilling Effect: A Comparative Analysis of Case Law from the African, European, and Inter-American Systems. “Now I have a better understanding of the risk factors regarding the chilling effect and the challenges they bring to the protection of human rights,” said student Maria Camila Torres Perez.

In other news, Belgium moves forward with transposing the EU’s Anti-SLAPP Directive into national law. The Commission of Justice of the Belgian Federal Parliament is currently discussing a bill that goes beyond the “minimum harmonization” of the Directive: the proposal also integrates some of the Anti-SLAPP Recommendations of the European Commission and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

Citing the explanatory memorandum, CGFoE expert Dirk Voorhoof of Ghent University’s Human Rights Centre writes that the bill recognizes “the purpose of the “slapper” is to stifle public debate, through the abuse of the judiciary.” The bill points to the obligation of states “to ensure a safe and favourable environment for everyone to participate in the public debate without fear” under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In the US, things might be shifting in the opposite direction. Last week, in North Dakota, a state with no anti-SLAPP statutes, a jury found Greenpeace US entities and Greenpeace International liable for more than $660 million in a lawsuit brought by fossil fuel pipeline company Energy Transfer. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment, and lawsuits like this aimed at destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech,” said Sushma Raman, Interim Executive Director, Greenpeace Inc, Greenpeace Fund.

Greenpeace is appealing. We are monitoring the case and will keep you updated.

CGFoE warmly welcomes the appointment of Sofía Jaramillo Otoya as the next Executive Director of the Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP).

Sofía is a seasoned lawyer with extensive experience in the field of freedom of expression, international human rights protection mechanisms, academia, and civil society organizations, including several key roles within our initiative. She led the development of the Spanish language version of the Case Law Database while working with Catalina Botero at the University of Los Andes, and she later designed the Teaching Freedom of Expression without Frontiers portal for CGFoE while working as a Legal Officer with us in New York.

We look forward to continuing our cooperation with both Sofía and FLIP and extend our greetings to the outgoing director, Jonathan Bock, whose leadership fostered fruitful collaboration between our organizations. We also congratulate journalist Camilo Vallejo on his appointment as the new Chair of the Board of Directors.

Image credit: nacionpaisa.com

United States
Little v. Llano County 
Decision Date: June 6, 2024
The United States Court of Appeals for Fifth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s preliminary injunction order (with minor modification) ordering the replacement of books removed from a public library. Patrons of the library had brought the case after the public library in their county had removed seventeen children’s books on the order of a county official who believed that the books were overly sexual. The Court ruled that public libraries cannot remove books based on disagreement with their content, as this violates the First Amendment and the public’s right to access ideas. The Court held that an official violates the First Amendment if they remove a book with the “substantial motivation” to deny access to ideas with which they disagree and found that the books in the case were likely removed because of complaints with the “substantial motivation” to deny access to particular ideas.

Malaysia
Tuanku Nur Zahirah v. Clare Louise Brown
Decision Date: December 12, 2023
The Malaysian Court of Appeal found that a non-fiction author had defamed a member of the royal family in a book which had mistakenly accused the family member of involvement in a corruption scandal. The lower court had accepted the author’s admission that the attribution was an error and found that the allegedly defamatory statements were justified. On appeal, the Court emphasized that, on an ordinary and natural reading of the statements, and given the context and the royal family member’s position in society, the statements were defamatory and would lower her in the estimation of right-thinking members of society.

Hungary
The case of members of the Hungarian Catholic community against a weekly news magazine
Decision Date: February 19, 2021
The Hungarian Constitutional Court dismissed an appeal against the lower courts’ decisions that a magazine cover depicting a famous painting, repurposed to show politicians at the birth of Jesus, was not an infringement of the dignity of the Catholic community. The magazine cover sought to highlight the greed of the country’s leading politicians and all the courts accepted that it was not intended as an insult to Catholicism, Christianity or the birth of Jesus. The Court accepted that expression that is “unduly insulting” to the dignity of religious communities can be restricted, but that the purpose of the expression is of primary importance.

The case of the social media criticism of a well-known Hungarian media personality
Decision Date: April 23, 2018
The Hungarian Constitutional Court held that calling a media personality a “psychopath” who was making lives miserable and who had obtained contracts “under murky circumstances” on social media did not infringe his personality rights, reputation and dignity. The media personality had sued a social media commentator and the Court of First Instance and Court of Appeal had dismissed his application. The Constitutional Court examined the nature of public figures and their required higher tolerance of public criticism, and held that the lower courts had correctly balanced the competing rights of freedom of expression and reputation in dismissing the media personality’s case.

APRIL 10-11: Knight Institute Symposium on AI and Democratic Freedoms to Feature Leading Scholars and Technologists. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University will host a symposium on the risks that artificial intelligence is posing to democratic freedoms. Panel discussions will include “​​AI, Freedom of Expression, and Democratic Backsliding,” “Regulating AI in a Time of Democratic Upheaval,” and “Reframing AI in the Digital Public Sphere,” among others. Ben Buchanan, Professor at Johns Hopkins University and former Biden White House Special Advisor for AI and Director for Technology and National Security on the National Security Council, will be the keynote speaker. April 10-11, 2025. The Forum, Columbia University, New York City, or via live streaming. Learn more and register here.

● US: Academic Groups Sue Trump Administration over Deportation Policy, by Ingrid Burke Friedman. The JURIST reports that on March 25, five US academic associations filed a lawsuit against the US government and individual officials over the illegal “ideological-deportation policy” targeting pro-Palestine voices among university students and faculty. The associations, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Ahilan Arulanantham, and Zimmer, Citron & Clarke LLP, argue that President Trump’s administration has created “a climate of repression and fear” on university campuses and is “improperly using immigration law to target protected political speech.” Federal agencies are currently trying to deport several individuals, including Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate who acted as a spokesperson for pro-Palestine student protesters last spring.

● Türkiye: IPI Condemns Police Brutality and Detentions of Journalists Reporting Widespread Protests. The International Press Institute (IPI) deplores the ongoing large-scale crackdown on journalists in Türkiye as the country has not seen this severity of attacks – physical violence, mass arrests, and digital censorship – since the Gezi Park protests in 2013. Tens of thousands of protesters have been taking over the streets following the suspension and detention of ​​Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, on corruption charges on March 19, along with over a hundred other arrests. The Turkish authorities are targeting the journalists covering the protests: IPI reports multiple physical injuries, home raids and subsequent detentions, blockages of more than 700 social media accounts, threats to revoke broadcast licenses, and restrictions of social media access.

● Hungary: New Anti-LGBTIQ+ Law. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk urges the Hungarian authorities to revoke the new Anti-LGBTIQ+ law banning Pride and similar events, as well as other legislation that discriminates against LGBTIQ+ individuals. “We are deeply concerned at legislation […] that results in arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on the rights of LGBTIQ+ individuals to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and privacy, including when advocating for their human rights in events such as Pride parades,” said UN Human Rights spokesperson Liz Throssell in a comment. Cristian González Cabrera, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch, described the law as “draconian,” calling on the EU Commission to launch new legal action against Hungary’s government.

This section of the newsletter features teaching materials focused on global freedom of expression which are newly uploaded on Freedom of Expression Without Frontiers

Cover to Cover: An Analysis of Titles Banned in the 23-24 School Year, by Madison Markham, Tasslyn Magnusson, Sabrina Baêta, and Kasey Meehan. In the 2023-2024 academic year, PEN America recorded 10,046 cases of school book bans in the US. A recent report analyzes the unique titles affected – more than 4,000 of them – applying 37 variables concerning the type of book and its content. The results show that the bans are removing entire identities from library shelves: “36% of all banned titles featured characters or people of color and a quarter (25%) included LGBTQ+ people or characters. Of titles with LGBTQ+ people or characters, over a quarter (28%) feature trans and/or genderqueer characters.” With the analysis of graphics and illustrations, certain identity-targeting becomes even more blatant: “73% of all graphic and illustrated titles feature LGBTQ+ representation, people or characters of color, or discuss race or racism.”

● Defending the Integrity Principle: Necessity, Remorse and Moral Consistency in the Protest Trial, by Steven Cammiss, Graeme Hayes, and Brian Doherty. The article, published by the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, analyzes the distinct features of protest trials, developing the term “integrity principle,” which the authors apply to three high-profile UK protest cases: “the Frack Free Three,” “the Stansted 15,” and “the Colston 4.” Access the paper here.

● UNESCO Slams Nepal’s Social Media Bill for Overreach, Ambiguity. UNESCO’s official review of Nepal’s Social Network Bill-2081 raises concerns over arbitrary content restrictions and lack of independent regulation and calls for revision. The Kathmandu Post spoke to Joan Barata, Senior Legal Fellow for The Future of Free Speech and Senior Consultant for UNESCO, about his legal analysis of the bill. Read more here.

This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression.  For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.